- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I have to echo and amplify the other posters' sentiments. This article reminds me of the bloviating spun into term papers in academia: its thesis is obfuscated by lines upon lines of over-obvious evidentiary "insights" which pile up an impressive amount of jargon familiar to someone in the discipline (read: phrases the term paper writer has heard the professor use a lot), but whose connection to any sort of point worth making beyond hearing oneself speak is unclear. This isn't "Media Studies 205: Seminar on Celebrity," it's Salon; if Joan and the gang throw something up for us to read, the act carries an implicit promise that the information contained therein is worth having. Most Salon readers, however, don't need this article to tell us that Angelina and Katie's PR-driven maternity campaigns aren't worth two ounces of our attention, much less our emulation, and we don't have the institutional power to bestow extra credit or a Summa stripe on anybody's gown. Neither the worship of celebrity parenthood nor its ponderous deconstruction are interesting or relevant enough to merit a forum on this esteemed site, IMHO - at least, not unless the writer has some genuine and original insights to offer. No offense, Mr. Harris, but this is a B-, at best.
